PUMPKIN?

Chip Salzenberg gets credit for that, with a nod to his cow orker, David Croy. We had passed around various names (baton, token, hot potato) but none caught on. Then, Chip asked:

[begin quote]

Who has the patch pumpkin?

To explain: David Croy once told me once that at a previous job, there was one tape drive and multiple systems that used it for backups. But instead of some high-tech exclusion software, they used a low-tech method to prevent multiple simultaneous backups: a stuffed pumpkin. No one was allowed to make backups unless they had the "backup pumpkin".

[end quote]

The name has stuck. The holder of the pumpkin is sometimes called the pumpking (keeping the source afloat?) or the pumpkineer (pulling the strings?).

SELECTED PATCH SIZES

The "diff lines kB" means that for example the patch 5.003_08, to be applied on top of the 5.003_07 (or whatever was before the 5.003_08) added lines for 110 kilobytes, it removed lines for 19 kilobytes, and changed lines for 424 kilobytes. Just the lines themselves are counted, not their context. The "+ - !" become from the diff(1) context diff output format.

The patch-free era

In more modern times, named releases don't come as often, and as progress can be followed (nearly) instantly (with rsync, and since late 2008, git) patches between versions are no longer provided. However, that doesn't keep us from calculating how large a patch could have been. Which is shown in the table below. Unless noted otherwise, the size mentioned is the patch to bring version x.y.z to x.y.z+1.